So here goes, please, let's discuss plot and see if it's all that complex or so simple that it defies understanding. Or does everyone have a different concept of what plot is. Or am I just so dense that I can't understand it without a frustratingly lengthy deconstructive process.

But what is plot? The word was coined in 1641 as it pertains to storytelling. Before that, Aristotle's term mythos was common. Unfortunately, the term mythos has taken on modern meanings that don't relate to plot.

Dramatic structure is another common term for plot. Gustav Freytag, a famously successful mid 19th century German dramatist and author, though relatively unknown in America today, used the latter term rather than plot or mythos in his signal writing tome Die Technik des Dramas, 1863. In it he explains the system of dramatic structure that he located in all the best stories up to his time. His macrostructural analysis stood up to the scrutiny of critical review in its day. Today, his structure is seen as outdated in one appreciable way. The low in tension exposition opening and denouement ending of a story are not acceptable to most readers and editors today. Perhaps Freytag's analysis contributed to a marked shift in the emphasis writers placed on tension in story beginnings and endings.

Remarkably, the most ancient writing tome, the genesis one, "Aristotle's Poetics," has withstood the test of time and critical scrutiny over thousands of years. It's not easy to read in any of the multitude of translations available, nor, I imagine, in its original Greek. It's about as clear as a mudhole. But all that is essential to plot Aristotle explains: magnitude of a dramatic premise, first cause, inciting moment, climax, resolution, antagonism, logical plausible causation, tension, imitation of reality, authenticity, character, reversal of fortune, recognition; apportionment of beginnings, middles, endings, acts and scenes; emotion, and conflict; digressions, happenstance or temporal plots, anecdote and vignette, etc.; if a reader can just wade through all the digressive or confusing content. The first of which being that there was no such thing as a writer in his day. No matter what narrative mode one composed in, one was a poet, regardless of verse, meter, and rhyme.

In my case, the most simplistic definition of plot for me is: What happens in the story? Literally, every single event in the story. So plot is a separate entity from anything that has to be analyzed to be understood: character development, purpose of story, moral message.

Of course, the true nature in plot isn't quite so simple (nothing is, really). I believe that plot contains elements of everything that you took from Aristotle. It could be viewed as a catch-all term as well.

Norman Freidman (1975) wrote of fourteen plot types. One or another writer on writing says there are X-number types of plots, fourteen, twenty-seven, thirty-six, hundreds, an infinite number. What I believe they're talking about is conventions of story types or modes or storylines. I've not found that there's more than one fundamental plot shape for every story that's ever risen to the level of publication and reader acclaim, that I've read. Freytag introduced it in Die Technik des Dramas. Known as the Freytag Pyramid, the universal plot is represented on a Cartesian graph. The idealized modern version is an isosceles triangle.

Aristotle located one axis of dramatic structure in causation. The dual identities of causation are cause and effect. Causation moves a plot forward on the horizontal axis.

Freytag located a second axis of dramatic structure in tension. The dual identities of tension are pity-fear emotional stimulation (sympathy) and suspense. Tension moves a plot vertically.

I've located a third axis of dramatic structure in antagonism. The dual identities of antagonism are purpose and problem. Antagonism influences both causation and tension. Antagonism moves a plot perpendicularly to the other axes, also on a horizontal axis. It is the in and out direction to causation's back and forth and tension's up and down directions.

In a character-driven plot, a character is the primary plot actor, the reader-anchoring vehicle in which the plot moves. Mr. Card locates milieu, idea, and event as other prime plot actors in stories. Each type has unique characteristics. Emphasis on which is primary doesn't preclude the others, but the fundamental plots are identical. Something happens to someone. The someone does something about it, unsuccessfully or successfully. The someone accommodates to the outcome.

In example, a milieu story, say two, Heinlein's Starship Trooper and Homer's Odyssey, a native leaves home and ventures to a strange place. The story is then about personal growth acheived through efforts against great opposition to returning home (sanctuary). Heinlein slightly deviated from that and I think it weakens the story ending, which to me just petered out without a fully satisfying resolution. Of course, Rico's home was destroyed early in the story so returning home wasn't a literal option. It's a you-can't-go-home-again coming-of-age ending. Rico's recognition (resolution) is that he's found a new home in military service; however, that's in the ending's figurative meaning and isn't as clear or as satisfying as the ending of Homer's Odyssey. Ulysses physically returns home to new adventures which complete his journey by reasserting his right to call it home.

I believe James Joyce went astray with his novel Ulysses by not appreciating the benefits of milieu's unique characteristics in Homer's Odyssey. The titles themselves show that Joyce's is a character-driven plot, Homer's a milieu-driven plot. Yet in his homage to Homer's classic story, Joyce doesn't take readers on a venture into an unknown world, unfamiliar maybe, but not so unfamiliar that he makes the familiar strange or vice versa. Figuratively, yes, an otherwise ordinary day in Dublin where Leopold Bloom experiences the societal peculiarities of his mundane world. And Bloom physically returns home, but it's Penelope's ending in the character of Bloom's wife Molly. Bloom isn't required to assert his right to come home, though in a figurative sense he does by literally marking his territory. Molly doesn't welcome him back, in a figurative sense, denying him his home. Too much of the meaning of the story is on the figurative level.

Another essential plot aspect lacking in Ulysses is what circumstance Bloom has that sets him at odds with his everyday experiences. I've not located a definitive one, what Aristotle calls a first cause. A first cause, the first milestone of plot, is a causal circumstance that informs readers and the protagonist that all is not normal with the protagonist's world. It is the first opportunity in a story to "bait" readers into the story through sympathetic resonance with the protagonist's predicament. Lacking an anchoring cause for Bloom to address, I've wandered adrift in my every reading of Ulysses.

I begin my stories with plot - an initiating event where I envision a unique climax and conclusion. I then look for a character or characters to place in this plot. I'm not sure that I could just take a character and not already have a plot wihtin which for him or her or it to react. I tried this once and the character became a very different person, including his name, by the time I got a little ways into the story.

I suppose that beginning with plot is like taking a God approach to writing...

For example, Fleming's Goldfinger (spoilers ...): what if an evil man wanted to control the world by controlling the gold supply? He'd corner all available gold reserves and try to blow up Fort Knox. But Bond 007 would be on to him ... so the plot becomes the answer to the question, How would Bond stop him? Then the plot is roughly: get Goldfinger's attention at a golf match, follow him to Switzerland, get detected, get almost killed, get reprieved, get taken to America, get followed by the CIA, get cuffed to the bomb, get away, save the world -- and get a few girls along the way.

I think there's another important aspect to plot, which makes it harder, and that is foreshadowing. Good stories take some twists and turns, not so much to develop the plot, but more to establish things we'll need to know later. So, for example, Bond stories always start with a sub-plot which establishes Bond as a world-saving womanizer and, in Goldfinger's case, Goldfinger as a bullying bad guy.

The scene with the dead girl covered in gold paint establishes motivation for her sister to go after the villain, and so provide (even more) love interest for Bond. All this foreshadowing and establishing of motive could be regarded as sub-plots, essential for telling the story in an entertaining fashion. Sub-plots answer sub-questions like, "What if the bad guy killed his secretary for a misdemeanour? What would her sister do?" (The story could have been told without the girls and their sub-plot, but this is the writer's way of making the story more entertaining... for some of us at least.)

What does any of this have to do writing? In Aristotle's understanding of the universe, the character is always a result of causality. Certain events (plotting) caused the character to be who and how he/she is. The plot continues to have an effect on the character, molding him/her, in the midst of story (a segment of the character's life). Therefore the character was a result of plot before the story and continues to be a result of plot throughout the story. It's a "which came first: the chicken or the egg?" question. In Aristotle's view it has to be the egg (the plot).

In every case, a lacking element was attention to macrostructure. If the plot didn't digress into irrelevant pathways, then it was a happenstance chance plot or a purely temporal relationship of actions. The first cause, the inciting moment, the rising action scenes, the climax, the falling action scenes, the resolution didn't correlate in any meaningful way, if the milestones of plot were hit at all. Each had interesting qualities, but wasn't inherently a well-crafted story for lack of effective structure.

I've read many critiques looking for insights into what readers want from a story. In almost all cases they devolve into nitpicks without any true insight into what's lacking in any given story. There's some good instincts apparent, but what they are saying escaped me. "This didn't feel right. That seems awkward. There is where I think the story drags. This word/phrase threw me out." etc. Rarely, maybe one or two out of a hundred look at the whole story as a complete unit. Even then the response is instinctive, "Slow opening, I wasn't captured by the story enought to read all the way through. I was confused by the action. Not much tension. I couldn't find a climax. I don't see the point. The ending didn't satisfy me."

It's not just fellow emerging writers, either, I've scrutinized the commentary of slush readers where available. They have good instincts for the broad brush, but the commentary is on the same microfocused level as anyone else's. Which doesn't give me confidence that they're any better judges of story than anyone else. They just happen to be in the job of first screener and have good instincts about what their senior screeners are looking for. The often paraphrased phrase comes to mind, I don't know why it's good, but I know it when I see it.

So back to plot I've come and found at least one tool for writing and evaluating story. I've since read and reread stories, favorites, mine and others, bestsellers, classics, latest and greatest. I've "plotted" them on a Cartesian graph, which I've also done with emerging writers stories. It ain't easy. Nothing has ever come easily to me, excepting reading and study and test taking. Most of what I accomplish is a product of hard work, and frustratingly catastrophic trial and error. The hard way for me is the easy way because I've at least avoided false starts as much as possible.

My meaning space epiphany gave me a tool to appreciate what means something in a story, when and where exposition, description, summarization, explanation, introspection, sensation, and emotion are most effective as narrative modes, and how much of one or another is enough. Plot didn't come to me as an epiphany. It's been a slow slog down a hard row to hoe.

In accessing macrostructure through microform I found a corner I could get a thumb under. Ernest Hemingway's pinhead fiction story, "For sale; baby shoes, never worn." The story superficially reads like a classified ad. I've torn it inside out and upside down and found most of the story occurs outside the frame, implied, figurative meaning subject to interpretation but not too widely.

Yet in all that little story there's a defined macrostructure nonetheless. The first cause is implied and literal, For sale, as a reader of classifieds a sale causes me to want to read, but it's the never-worn baby shoes that reveal a predicament to me as a reader, and ostensibly the placer of the ad. Items acquired and no longer wanted is the literal predicament. That's not a very high magnitude predicament, but in the universally accessible figurative meaning it is. Baby shoes bought in anticipation of a new arrival, never to be worn, how tragic.

The inciting moment also has a literal meaning of low magnitude. The inciting moment is when something is done about the predicament. Posting a classified ad to get rid of unwanted items is taking action. The emotional resonance influence of sympathy is revealed in the figurative meaning. The deprived classified advertiser is calling out for a meaningful understanding. A cry for sympathy, something done about the figurative but real predicament of losing the intended wearer of the baby shoes.

Rising action scenes are further efforts compelled by purpose and problems to address a predicament, best ending in tragedy and transitioning to greater efforts to address the predicament. A climax is when efforts are greatest, problems and purpose compelling efforts are greatest and resulting in a reversal of fortune and a recognition of outcome in falling action scenes. For Sale doesn't have additional scenes in it's six words and three punctuation marks. One effort failed to put the baby shoes on a new arrival's feet. The literal outcome that those shoes would not be worn by any of the classified advertiser's children. The figurative meaning that there would be no expectation of a baby again, ever. Resolution.

I didn't think much of For Sale when I first read it. Because of its fame and microform, I added it to my benchtest stories. I've located cauastion, tension, and antagonism, and the milestones of plot within the figurative meaning of the story. Now, it makes me cry every time I read it. There's even an allegorical interpretation for the story, a writer's manuscript wanting for publication died stillborn. Powerful story.

Here's my pinhead fiction story. Savvy readers will notice it's borrowed from a nautical chart. Approximate inlet buoy positions marked on chart. Beware of submerged shipwrecks.

For my testbench, I chose two bestselling novels with openings that begin late in their story's timelines, Dona Tart's The Secret History (1992), and Charles Frazier's Thirteen Moons (2006). Tart's opening begins in the middle of the story's timeline, Frazier's in the ending of the timeline. Tart's begins with a premeditated murder. Frazier's with the reminiscences of an old man reliving his formative experiences. Tart's story is a coming of age story, Frazier's too, but in the memoir mode. It's also partly a historical narrative and partly a documentary novel. Each starts with a chapter in out-of sequence timelines then transitions back to their beginning timelines. The stories continue in linear time sequence through to their endings after that.

I wasn't at first trying to figure out why their nonlinear timelines worked. I was testing the hypothesis that their plot shapes and milestones placements were identical to other stories. I identified and graphed both stories' milestones. I located first causes, inciting moments, climaxes, and resolutions in each and where they occur relative to the lengths of the stories. Thinking the first causes were not readily apparent and not being sure of them, locating the first causes came last after I'd determined what and where the other milestones are, beginning with their resolutions and working backward.

Once I'd identified them, I noted that the climaxes occur at the end of the middle halves, the inciting moments at the ends of the first quarters, and, of course, the completed resolutions at the ends of the final quarters. The first causes became apparent after I grasped what were the relevant factors of the other milestones as they related to the protagonists' predicaments they sought to address. Both stories have identical predicaments. Richard Papen's (figuratively an orphan) difficulty fitting in during his college life, life in general, and Will Cooper's struggle to belong in society as a literal orphan.

Voilà! Eureka! the epiphany floored me. Both stories start off portraying for readers what the protagonists' predicaments are, but of more significance story- and plot-wise it's when the protagonists become aware that all is not normal with their circumstances. Cooper's that at the end of his times he's finally realized he's still an unwanted orphan. Papen's that he isn't figuratively an orphaned child any longer. Due to his collusion in Bunnie's murder, he's an insider, like it or not, for good or ill.

At the end of their first quarters, they first start to address their predicaments, inciting moment. At both climaxes the protagonists have reversals of fortune, recognize their outcomes, and proceed to accommodate toward them, resolution. My conclusion is that nonlinear timelines are a product of first causes belonging in openings.

For me, plot, character, and milieu are tied together. The best stories are able to answer the question, why this character, why this series of events, why this setting. Too often, plot is used as the excuse to tell a story.

Since you mentioned Secret History I'll use that as an example.

SPOILERS!

That book as hugely successful for me. Why Richard Papen? Because he has the unique qualities of being just arrogant enough, just pathetic enough, just needy enough, that he insinuates himself into the elite group. He, in some way, creates the story by the very fact of who he is, and what he wants, and what he's like.

The plot infrastructure in which he acts is the product of the people that he associates with. Again, it's character acting on story. It is because of the unqiue combination of characters--Bunny, Francis, Henry, Charles, and Camilla---that events unfold as they do, and because of the characters that Papen is drawn to them, hence create the need for a story at all. This, to me, is what it means to "start with characters".

As for the setting--the remoteness, the wildness of Vermont very much plays a role in the story. It could not have happened without freakish snow storms. It would not have happened the same way if Papen, a California boy, were not isolated in the cold winter as he as. Equally important is the contrasting social climate of the college, and Francis's wealthy landholding. In some ways, the very setting is a character, without which the story could not happen the way it did. All of these elements drive the story to its inexorable end. The characters, given who they are and the setting they are in, could not have acted any other story.

The Y-axis is tension, as in Freytag's original.

The Z-axis is antagonism, my contribution.

Figuring out that antagonism is the third axis took me several years of study and trial and error. The professor who introduced me to Freytag's Pyramid didn't fully understand it. In fact, he reversed the tension and causation axes in his presentations. The odd thing is that caused me to explore the Pyramid's value for understanding plot.

I hypothesized, if there's two dimensions to plot, why not a third. That same professor proposed that conflict was the third dimension. I disagreed because not every well-crafted story is a conflict resolution story. It was only part of the answer. Opposition is another part, but still not an encompassing answer. In the dual nature of antagonism I found the answer. It takes two to tango, two to contend, to conflict, to argue, to fight.

From medical terminology I found the greatest insight. In medical parlance, Narcan is considered an antagonist of opiates. Which one is an antagonist is subject to interpretation. Injecting a heroin overdose victim with Narcan immediately neutralizes the life-threatening effects of the heroin. To a junkie, arguably, heroin antagonizes Narcan. Take enough heroin and the neutralizing effects of the Narcan are surpassed. In chemistry, two antagonists combine to produce a new compound. Change pure and simple.

Antagonism can be a product of conflict, confrontation, or conflagration, or it might not be contentious problems. It can be coodeterminate, cooperative, or coordinate purposes. My desire to write a publishable story is an antagonism compelling me to greater efforts. Rejection is the anti-antagonism compelling me to greater efforts. Purpose and problem cause change. Antagonism is the agency of change.

Avante-garde literary theoreticians denounce the tyranny of plot. In my opinion, they denounce what they don't know, perhaps out of fear from being exposed for their ignorance. Some emphasize character, others setting or sensation, emotion even, as being superior to plot. I don't see how any one element of story can be separated as the sole need for story, artificial divisions for accessing story, yes, but not singularly essential, besides plot.

An interesting narrative about a person, object, or place, lacking a plot, is an anecdote. An emotionally stimulating narrative about a setting, lacking a plot, is a vignette. Story is plot. The synthetically separated elements of story all lead to plot, as all roads lead to Rome. Character as it relates to plot, setting, discourse, theme, tone, rhetoric, resonance as they relate to plot. Anecdotes and vignettes get published occasionally, but they're like hors d'oeuvres, snacks, no substance.

In Hemingway's pinhead fiction story "For sale; baby shoes, never worn." There is no dramatic persona inhabiting the story, no character within the frame of the story, inanimate objects, yes, a pair (ostensibly) of baby shoes. No setting at all, ostensibly or otherwise as I know it. Maybe a newspaper's classified ad's section is the setting. The discourse is a pure summary exposition in a classified ad's standard narrative mode, a tell, no show, no dialogue. No superficial theme, life and death implied. Tone or attitude toward a theme is nonexistent, but in the tenor of numb indifference there's a mood of note, interpretable as forlorn grief. Rhetoric subtly in a scheme of substitution, a story substituted for a classified ad. Resonance, pity from sympathy for an expected new arrival who will never wear the baby shoes.

Cause and effect are implied, buying baby shoes, then selling baby shoes, although it doesn't follow the standard model of a logical cause and effect connection: The king died. Out of grief, the queen died. Tension doesn't rise appreciably within the story, but upon reflection, the emotional influence has power, sympathy with the classified advertiser's predicament and suspense from a universal understanding that the baby shoes weren't used for the purpose they were acquired. Antagonism from denied expectations, problem and purpose.

A plot may take either of two directions of reversal, from good to bad fortune or bad to good fortune. The implied direction of For Sale's reversal is from good to bad fortune, a classical Greek tragedy. From bad to good fortune, a Greek comedy.

When a story goes from, say, good to bad to good fortune, there are two reversals, one too many for a decisive and satisfying ending. Essentially, the plot has looped back to the beginning state. There is no completed change for the protagonist, thus the story's not complete. Many stories leave readers hanging with no completed change. They aren't as popular as ones that do because they don't have satisifying resolutions.

In summary, the basic attributes of plot are;

Causation: cause and effect over time elasped in a story's timeline.
Tension: sympathy and suspense derived from pity-fear emotional clustering and artfully delayed answers to questions posed by a story.
Antagonism: purpose and problem related to a predicament revealed by a first cause.

The basic milestones of plot are intersections of the three plot attributes;

First cause: when readers and a protagonist become aware of a predicament
Inciting moment: when the protagonist begins to address the predicament and antagonism presents, if it didn't within the first cause
Rising action: increasing problem and purpose efforts to address the predicament, best when the problems outweigh the purpose resulting in failures for each dramatic unit, scene, act, etc.
Climax: maximum problem and purpose efforts to address the predicament timely causing a recognition
Recognition: recognizing the outcome of efforts to address the predicament
Reversal: the predicament's outcome of tragedy or comedy
Falling action: accommodating toward the outcome
Resolution: completed accommodation toward the outcome.

Two other features of plot that're more essential than they seem. Magnitude and logical causation. The magnitude of a predicament must be sufficient to carry a plot toward a heady climax. A narrative about a mountain range, while grand in scale and scope, isn't likely sufficiently definitive to be headily interesting to more than a few geologists. A mountain range probably has a million little predicaments to begin with. A grain of sand? No, too small in scale and scope. What possible predicaments might a grain of sand have?

For purposes of illustration, say, a boulder is about the right scale and scope for a story. Say, define the predicament first, like, locate the boulder in a raging stream. An immediate predicament presents: The stream is eroding the boulder, also, the boulder is an obstacle to the stream. Cause and effect and antagonism derive from the predicament, but not necessarily tension. It's a rock; who cares what happens to a rock?

Personify the boulder, cast it as a sympathetic character. Authorial license allows for metaphorical comparison. As an imaginative premise, imbue the boulder with quickening awareness because of an abrupt escalation in erosion. It's not a great stretch of imagination to connect a rock with a person, no granting agency of sentience required. Then the literal predicament is the boulder is being worn down to nothing, or it worries that that's what's happening.

In a figurative interpretation, the boulder becomes a person who can't change but is being changed by outside forces and doesn't like it, does something about it. The stream becomes the mass of humanity beating down the boulder. It's in the way; get rid of it. The stream won't move to accommodate the boulder. Suspense, what will the outcome be for the boulder? For the stream? Tragedy or comedy?

Logical causation is probable, possible, plausible cause and effect that follows a sensible and coherent sequence of events. Our boulder might plausibly be imbued with sentience, but it's a rock. Giving it an ability to move might stretch the imagination too much. Not being able to move (change) is essential to the suggested story anyway. If literal moving is not possible, how might the boulder seek to change the stream's eroding influence? Convince the stream not to flow so fast? Convince the stream to move around it instead of directly into it? Convince the stream to alter its course? The boulder is like the psychologist and the lightbulb. How many psychologists does it take to change a lightbulb. One, but the lightbulb must want to change.

This boulder scenario is a good example for illustration purposes, but not likely to result in a good story. The only logical outcome, sans deus ex machina, is that the only change a boulder can make is accept that it will be worn down to nothing and become one with the stream.

An illogical plot is one where MacGuffins, plot coupons, coincidences, happenstance chances, and/or temporal relationships drive the rising actions of a story. These sorts of stories get published, too. They're ineffective writing, though, like a handful of candyfloss, they have no great and wide enduring appeal.

The story I'm currently writing started dragging. In the past, I didn't know why that happened. I examined when the story went astray and found that the dramatic circumstances were recycling. The purpose hadn't changed. The problems were greater, just they were repetitive of earlier narrative modes and situational conditions. The story's back on track now that I know what was wrong and what to do about it.

I've wanted a translated copy of Freytag's Technique of the Drama since I reviewed a copy in a noncirculating college library's special collections. There is one translated version published back in the early 1900s. Available copies I'd located were collectibles priced. No English editions were available in my price range. I've recently checked for it again. August 2008, Bibliolife released a new edition. Freytag's Technique of the Drama: An Exposition of Dramatic Composition and Art, translated by Elias J. MacEwan. Available at Amazon for $22 list. It's in my price range. I'm making an exception to being burned out on writers writing on writing tomes. Now to just find the money to get it. At least for more intensive study, if not for comparison with Aristotle's Poetics, and to have it ready to hand.